Doping mess leaves cycling in grave need of new blood

Imagine tennis without Federer and Nadal, formula one without Alonso and Raikkonen, snooker without O'Sullivan and Higgins. That is the state in which the world of cycling finds itself, at a time when the conditions for its popularity and prosperity have never been more propitious.

When the Giro d'Italia, the first of the cycling season's grand tours, starts in Sardinia on Saturday, absent from the line-up will be the man who won the race last year, and who, until his withdrawal a fortnight ago, was an odds-on favourite to repeat his victory. Ivan Basso, needless to say, is a casualty of cycling's current battle against doping.

In two months' time the Tour de France starts in London, and again the leading man will be absent. We still do not know whether Floyd Landis is entitled to call himself the winner of the 2006 Tour, but we know for certain that he has been barred from attempting to defend the title.

You don't have to look very far to see that, in Britain, the bicycle's time has come again. More and more people are pedalling to work, whether impelled by thrift, health issues or a concern for the planet's future. Expensive gear flies off the racks of crowded bike shops. And the start of the Tour will attract millions of committed and casual fans to the roadsides to watch the greatest free show in sport.

So why, last week, did the International Herald Tribune lead its front page with a story announcing a widespread withdrawal of financial backing from a sport that ought to be thriving? The answer is to be found in the continuing fallout from Operacion Puerto, the Spanish police dragnet that found bags of riders' blood in a doctor's office, and from the test which appeared to show that Landis zipped up the mountain to Morzine last July with an unreasonable amount of testosterone in his system.

Races have been cancelled on both sides of the Atlantic, television viewing figures are down across Europe, and teams are scuffling to replace departing sponsors. Discovery Channel, who sponsored Lance Armstrong's team during his last two Tour wins, are leaving at the end of the season, having made their decision even before the announcement that Basso would be making an immediate exit from the squad, following the decision of the Italian Olympic Committee to reopen the investigation. Basso had joined only last December, and would have been fancied to join the select list who have completed a Giro-Tour double.

In the past, generations of bike-racing aficionados turned a blind eye to their heroes' chemical dabblings. Forty years ago, few knowledgable fans were surprised when the dead Tom Simpson's pockets turned out to contain the remains of his amphetamine supply, and not many chose to condemn him. But these are different times, not least because the vastly increased intensity of the media's gaze makes life impossible for those who would wish to sweep such matters under the carpet.

The past cannot be rewritten. There should be no asterisk next to the name of the great Jacques Anquetil, the first winner of five Tours, to indicate that he was a user of stimulants. So were just about all his rivals. Today, however, zero tolerance and strict liability will have to be the watchwords, and cycling would be doing itself a big favour if it announced that in the future anyone found guilty of doping will be excluded from the sport for life.

The funny thing is that the crowds will still come out for the start of the Tour, even though most might not recognise the name of a single rider. But how nice it would be if, by the time the Giro finishes in Milan on June 3, cycling had found itself a new hero or two.

Mayweather-De La Hoya contest harks back to good old days of boxing

It ended with a flurry of blows and a hug. The decision was hard to call, but when it arrived the loser congratulated the winner and kept any resentment to himself. It was, above all, dignified, which made it difficult to believe that this was a boxing match at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

If all fights were like Saturday night's WBC light-middleweight contest, the sport would still have the kind of audience it used to enjoy in the days before a multiplicity of governing bodies and a catalogue of mismatches stripped away its credibility. Only the most diehard abolitionists could have failed to admire the way Floyd Mayweather and Oscar De La Hoya went about their work in a bout that provided a wonderful contrast of approaches and styles.

De La Hoya grabbed the initiative at the start, taking the fight to his opponent, while Mayweather held back, awaiting his opportunity. Eventually the younger man took his chance to shift the balance of the fight, and the final rounds became a showcase for his mesmerisingly fast hands and feet. Best of all, you would bet on both these men retaining their wits into old age.

How Ferguson wins titles at the dinner table

In these pages yesterday Daniel Taylor identified Sir Alex Ferguson's trip to Portugal last July, during which the Manchester United manager took a disaffected Cristiano Ronaldo out to dinner on order to persuade him his future lay at Old Trafford, as the first key moment of the title-winning campaign.

It reminded me of an incident 11 summers earlier, when Eric Cantona fled to France after announcing that he wished to leave United as a result of the FA's attitude to his appearance in a private practice match shortly before the end of his eight-month suspension. Ferguson's immediate reaction was to catch a flight to Paris, where he took Cantona out for a meal and talked him into returning to England in time for the start of a season in which United won the championship for a third time under the Scot. A clear precedent for what my colleague accurately described as "man-management at its very best".

Exhibition not quite grand

Generally speaking, sport and the arts are best advised to stay clear of each other, and it was hard to know what to make of the giant depictions of formula one pit stops exhibited by the celebrated German photographic artist Andreas Gursky at the new White Cube gallery in Mason's Yard, London.

Each photograph appeared to capture two pit crews refuelling and wheel-changing, watched from above by spectators in hospitality galleries. The pictures were taken at real grands prix but something about their uniformity gives them an unreal air. Maybe it's an interesting idea to remove the sense of speed and drama, turning a frantic event into a still life. But I found myself missing the rush and, most of all, the noise.

Bates plays on Leeds' fall

Many Leeds fans responded to last week's observations on their club's widely unlamented relegation, some with an eloquence that was almost enough to evoke a twinge of sympathy. But not quite. Ken Bates's fancy financial footwork has made a monkey of the Football League's statutory punishment for clubs that go into administration. It will deprive the Inland Revenue - in other words, you and me - of up to £5m (a sum he could pay from his own resources) and gives him the chance to return with a clean slate and the usual unnamed offshore backers to add another fortune to the one he walked away with from Chelsea.